Here's today's link, and yes, consider me among the many that was well and truly ready for this stuff to move to the side. Especially after my Eagles took the Patriots apart (albeit in pre-season), with some actual special teams explosiveness.
But don't worry, Olympics. I'm sure that we'll care again in four years, when the Brits try to have as secure of an event without having a docile populace and police state powers...
No, this isn't a political post. But thanks for thinking it...
Today in Beijing, the US Olympic squad put order back to the universe with a close but not absolutely terrifying win over the Spaniards. The Games served as a coming back party for Dwayne Wade, who led the way today with 27 points and seems to be ready to end that single-year futility in Miami.
Perhaps the close game in the Final will convince some folks that Olympic basketball is now an even keel kind of thing, and that the US should not just be expected to roll over the world. But the simpler fact of the matter is that as long as there is an athletic gap between us and the rest of the world -- i.e., when the nasty dunks and alley oops are all coming from guys wearing the US laundry -- the public expectation will remain that we should just wipe the floor with these guys. Despite the fact that, well, basketball is about more than jumping well, and the NCAA tournament proves that every year.
For now and the future, we should think of the US Men as a #1 seed in a single elimination tournament, in a game that the world is increasingly interested in playing. Within my lifetime, we might not even be the #!1 seed any more.
(Oh, and for anyone that really feels relief and pride and amazement over this, um, get a grip. It's just hoop.)
So the Olympics are getting better ratings than anticipated, and driving a tidy little payday for NBC in what, if not for the rush of political ad spending, would be a historically brutal year for advertising. (It's what happens in an economy where everyone takes it without lube from Big Oil, and the housing bubble pops -- but as the President says, it's very important that we give more time for those stimulus checks to work. Vote for the guy that's most like him!)
Anyhow, this has led the World Wide Lemur -- and for those of you that are new to the site's peculiar nomenclature, that's also known as the home of the Mouse, the covert destroyer of all things good, the murderer and corpse-raper of what used to be known as Monday Night Football, and the people whom I will not will not ever write for, no matter how many commenters think I'd cave for the cash (ESPN) -- to announce that they're going to get into the mix for the rights to televise London 2012.
Now, I don't much care who is going to televise things that I'm not going to watch, and I suspect, neither do you. (Witness our mutual lack of interest in the news that Emeril is switching networks, or that Oxygen is going to produce an all-nude version of "The View" to help turn more men gay.) But what the Lemur said about their decision to do so was telling... that sports is in their blood and what they do, dammit, and that they couldn't imagine televising all of the events via tape delay and packaging them the way that NBC is doing.
On my train this morning were two people who I couldn't imagine coming to this site in a month of Sundays. They were a man and a woman in their mid 40s to mid 50s, wearing the slightly graying hair, slightly padded clothing, and slightly spotted hands that await us all. For the first ten minutes of our trip towards NYC, they talked about Olympic beach volleyball. They both liked it, with the man filling the woman in on the parts of the match that she missed, in that she turned in before the game was over.
Now, this -- honestly -- is the Olympic demographic. People sucked in to watch a little sporting drama with an easy enough storyline, with no fear of seeming dramatically out of their element, because for heaven's sake, who is an expert on beach volleyball? My 8-year-old can understand it in five minutes, there's precious little in the way of Judging, and no one is going to make you feel unqualified to watch it in a blizzard of Volleyball Outsider-style arcane statistics. (If there is a Volleyball Outsiders, I'm sorry... not for insulting them, but for the general health and well-being of the species.)
Are these people going to care that beach volleyball in London will be LIVE? Probably not. In fact, they're probably going to hate it if it is, since that means that games will be on at 10am, just like Wimbeldon, but on a weekday. Will they care that the telecast will be with more ESPNish commentators, or perhaps more innovative / nausea-inducing camerawork? (A small note to the beach volleyball people: get a camera on the ball. If you can combine a scantily clad athletic woman with an arm motion that indicates violence in a tight high definition close-up, I guarantee Monstrous Web Traffic.) Probably not. They'll watch, or not, if it's on and if it's convenient and if it's compelling.
Not because it's live or because it's a Lemur Production. (And oh, this just in... there's no guarantee that the world will find the Olympics as compelling in 2012 as they did in 2008. And if you don't believe that, go ask the people that telecast the Athens Olympics in 2004, the ones that did so well in the ratings that the Beijing Games flew right under the radar. You can find them down at the methadone clinic, muttering bitterly at the television.)
Here's your link, and seriously... there's nowhere else to go but down for this guy.
I'm also loads of fun at parties, what with the sunny outlook on life...
I'm not much for the Olympics, but I always love me some bird flipping. Nice work from NESW on the more true version.
Hey, do you care about the Olympics? Me neither. But scandal? That's good eating. (And count your blessings, in that I've managed to avoid writing about how Brett The Jet has a fatigued arm, to match all of the media honks who've been... no, dammit, not going there....)
List away, with all of those jokes that will get the blog banned from certain domains. Shame the government can't do the same thing about the, you know, air.
Yes, the wrestler isn't happy with bronze (he felt he was wrongly disqualified by the judges). Of course, the real word for bronze is "Second Best Loser", and on a greater point, why doesn't this happen more often, really? (H/t, World of Isaac)
Your link is here, and Gentle Reader, trust me that the image search was not fun.
Also, don't look too closely at the image. You won't like it.
Now, if y'all will excuse me... it's home for an utter lack of dinner!
Your link is here, and it's a winner on many levels, but if you're a fan of obese white guys who can't flow -- and who isn't, really? -- then you really do need to give this a spin.
Props for the old school Bullet jersey. That's gangsta!
What, more than Shaq-Fu? It's Team USA's odd insistence on having three point guards (including the utterly spent Jason Kidd) on the 2008 Olympic team, and how the team is going to lack bigs, because they didn't get Duncan, Garnett or even Tyson Chandler. (Because when you have Dwight Howard, Carlos Boozer and Chris Bosh, you have no bigs, you see.)
Is this the best possible 12-man roster? Of course not; Kidd's there and Michael Redd is the only drop dead shooter. On the other hand, they could play a spectacular defensive team with Deron Williams at the 1, Kobe and LeBron on the wings, Tayshaun Prince at the 4 and Bosh at the 5; you pressure all over and live on transition.
But let's not, please, get into The Horror of thinking that they can't win because they don't have enough bigs. Or, if you are going to go that way, please do me the small favor of calling out the player who you think was a mistake to put on the roster. I'm doing that with Kidd, who can't shoot, is old, doesn't help you in half court and can't defend quick points anymore. Other than that, he's just great. Assuming you don't mind the fact that he hits women and kills coaches. U-S-A! U-S-A! U-S-A!
Finally, people in the US need to understand that Olympic / International hoop is not the same as NBA hoop. The foul calls that you get in the NBA don't exist. Mid-range and three-point shooting is almost to a college level of importance. The larger paint area means that passing big men are spectacularly useful, and penetrating guards aren't as big of an edge. So the traditional US strengths -- taking your man off the dribble, shot blocking athleticism, and on-the-ball pressure -- are all disregarded. Add in the curious choice of Duke's Coach K to lead them, and it's a horse designed by a committee, which is a camel... and not really suited for the task.
(Plus, there's also this -- they have to go to China and try to win in the most partisan Olympic environment since Los Angeles 1984, or Munich 1972, or Berlin 1936. Let's just say that I'm not counting on impartial refereeing, or giving much of a damn...)
The United States Olympic Committee will ship over 25,000 pounds of lean protein to China, rather than feed its athletes from entirely local sources, under the rationale of preventing its members from testing positive for steroids from eating contaminated food from the locals. The USOC is also concerned that local food is subject to high concentration of insecticides and illegal veterinary drugs.
There's a million questions that arise from this one, really, but I'll stick with four...
1) Doesn't this just make you even more interested in China for the Games? Wait, the dollar isn't as worth as much, either. Go book your travel plans now!
2) Assuming this isn't just some PR ploy, how do the Chinese athletes avoid testing for steroids at every instance?
3) Between the contaminated food, the rampant pollution, and the fact that the regime is planning on firing freaking rockets in the air to stop rain... not to mention Tibet and Falun Gong and Tiannemen Square... can we just rethink ever having an event in China again? (Besides, the site traffic from our Yao Ming post was crap.)
4) Seriously, the athletes are supposed to go to China for several weeks and not eat Chinese food?
The EconomistWelcome, Chinese readers who know enough English to do a Google search for Yao Ming! We're sure that you'll find lots to like here at FTT, including lots of text mentions of Yao Ming, because we're sure you all love that Yao Ming nearly as much as you like the image we found for you.
The number of Internet users in China grew an astonishing 50 percent in 2007, ending the year at 210 million users, according to the Chinese government. And there's still a long, long way to grow, as 210 million represents just 16 percent of the Chinese population.
More than 70 percent of China's Internet population is under 30. As such, "there is enormous pent-up demand for entertainment, amusement and social interaction," says Richard Ji, an analyst at Morgan Stanley. Chinese Internet companies have seen their share prices rise sharply; their collective market cap is now above $50 billion, having doubled just about every year since 2003, according to the Economist.
